Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Review - DS

Game Description: Struggling to uncover his identity, Roxas, Sora’s Nobody, joins Organization XIII, and with the help of the Organization’s 14th member, comes to learn what his role is within Kingdom Hearts' mysterious missing chapter. The action-RPG title features a single-player story mode, as well as a four-player cooperative multiplayer mode, a first for the series.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Review

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (pronounced "three five eight days over two") attempts to satiate the ravenous fanboy by adding a back story to one of the more mysterious characters of the series...Roxas. Should the fans devour this title or wait for a third helping of the main series?

The Pros

Good Story

Panel system adds strategy

Plenty of fan service

The Cons

Repetitive button-mashing mechanics

Visiting the same areas over and over again

Problematic camera

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (pronounced "three five eight days over two") attempts to satiate the ravenous fanboy by adding a back story to one of the more mysterious characters of the series – Roxas. Think of it as Scrappy Doo getting his own show. Should the fans devour this title or wait for a third helping of the main series?

Day 45: …And I want to Paint it Black

Roxas, the blond kid in black garb, wakes up in a castle with no memory of his past and a few memories from someone else. As the newest member of Organization XIII, an elite squad of very secretive individuals, Roxas must prove himself by using his unique talents, wielding the Keyblade and collecting hearts. But he’s not the only new kid on the scene as a fourteenth member, Xion, makes an appearance with powers similar to that of our hero. As you may have already guessed, there’s a conspiracy afoot connecting the new girl with a familiar face, the Organization, and the rest of Roxas’ missing memories.

As convoluted as these stories often end up being, 358/2 Days hits on many common themes that anyone who has ever survived puberty can relate to – fitting in, loneliness, and the highs and lows of friendship. Sprinkled throughout the game are fully animated cut-scenes with all the trimmings of music and voice acting. There are even some neat double scenes reflecting the memories of Sora on the bottom scene as the top scene plays through the game. The majority of the story, however, crawls by with in-game animation and a ton of text. Luckily, you can simply skip the scenes or keep jamming on the A button. (That’s how you play most of the game, anyway.)

The game also tries to stretch a fairly decent story across the three hundred and fifty-eight day stint in the Organization. Every mission ends with a short cut-scene and some of them even begin with their own little bit of story. Frankly, there’s just not enough there to keep your attention throughout the duration. After about the fiftieth time, I started skipping through the bits where Roxas and his best friend, Axel, go to the top of the clock tower to enjoy some salty popsicles. And no, that’s not a euphemism.

Fans of the series will be happy to know that they can slash away like they were still playing with Sora. Magic and items can be assigned to any of the face buttons for quick reference. While a well placed Thundara can really help out, even the mightiest of bosses will be a thumb-numbing session of hitting the A button until they’re dead. Some enemies do require you to use a bit of strategy to expose their weakness, but it will always be the mighty keyblade that puts them to rest. There are too many instances of mindlessly hacking away at the life bar to make this an enjoyable adventure.

Nothing is simply given to you in this game. The panel system requires you to place every ability, from spells to equipment, in a set grid that grows with every successful mission. It’s actually a neat idea that gives the game a sliver of strategy. Higher abilities take more than one space and can be augmented by additional panels. Do you pop out your block ability just so you can fit in a couple of extra spells? Will you sacrifice a level or two just to get a new sword to fit into the puzzle? But once you start the mission, it’s mostly all swinging and little thinking.

Day 203: Backtracking Forward

Being in the middle of a story already told is a tough deal. All the places you go and things you will see have usually been seen or done before. You’ll hack through eight areas such as Halloween Town or the deserted halls of Beast’s Castle. The problem comes in when the missions place you in the same three or four sections. As you progress, the areas do open up to much larger sections but these pieces (Wonderland’s Hedge Maze, Agrabah’s open boss area, for example) are woefully underutilized in the missions. The developers put a lot of work into making each of the areas look as close to the PS2 version as possible, but textures often come out flat and blocky. 358/2 Days would have been better off varying the areas instead of running through the same old sections.

Without an analog stick, the camera can be a problem. The lock-on feature works well enough for your standard fare of Heartless. For larger enemies such as bosses or creatures who like to zip past you, however, the lock tends to slip off your target. Worse yet, you’ll occasionally lock on to that one flying enemy who will spin the camera by floating a few feet above your head.

Day 255: With Friends like These…

Up to four players can explore the lands of Kingdom Hearts as members of Organization XIII. The leader of this little adventure can customize the experience to their liking – disable healing, allow for friendly fire, or even how much stuff you’ll lose once one of your teammates takes you down just to name a few. Top players will receive crowns that can earn you prizes in the single-player game. Fun when you have a full team smashing through the stage, the multiplayer still relies on you playing through previous missions, which means through the same stages, the same enemies, and the same button-mashing monotony.

Day 357: Not Quite There

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days has good ideas brought down by lazy mechanics. Die-hard fans will surely pick it up, but be forewarned. Instead of embracing the Disney magic, you’ll spend more time running away from it. It’s a solid attempt to translate the epic feel of the game on a handheld device that’s held back by the repetitive gameplay and tedious missions. 175/2 Days would have made for a better game.

Comments are Closed

an amazing feature of this game is something not present in psp games taking the big console graphics and putting them on the smaller screen i really like DFF but the graphics gave me the impression that this could be on ds and be 10 or 20 times better because in cut scenes with voice overs there were no mouth movements unlike in 358/2 days there were

i'm still workin on the game. i'm on day 171. and for the most part i can't put it down. i thought a lot of things worked. my main gripe was the abundance of sea-salt ice creams scenes and the fact that you were limited with magic. other than that i love it.

I have beat the game and it is a very good game but the only thing is that they want you to go back and redo missions to get new missions which is kinda annoying after awile and the ending to the second to last mission (day 358) is retarded and very dissapointing but the game makes up for it by a truckload.

o but the thing that really got me mad was the cutscenses i mean wut the hell man everyone knows square enix games for their amazing cutscenses and its not like the ds cant handle cutscenes either, every scene or almost every scene should have been a cutscene like in everyother kh game well except for chain of memories on the gba cuz well its the gba, so thats one of the biggest thing that got me mad and if everyone here read this they would stop overating it and see all the problems with this game im being realistic even though im a HUUUUGGGEE!!!!! kh fan who owns everyone and beat it 3 teams except for 358/2days cuz i couldnt take another second of that bad game

personally i loved kingdom hearts all of them were amazing even re com. but this game has way too many problems to be considered one of the good ones. First off, i dont even know anyone else with this game so that basically eliminates multiplayer for me which just sucks becuz the ds has wi fi, but for some stupid reason they didnt put it on. Second the game was too repetetive, i hated when saix gave me optional missions becuz this game would have been so much shorter if i hadnt done it which would lead me to the thrid problem of how short this game was. A great thing that i personally think they should have had is player vs player it wouldve been awesome to fight other memebers of organaztion 13 and other characters like sora and riku and choosing battle music wouldve been cool too. But this game had to many problems to be considered "good" the only thing that had this game going for it was the very good story and the ending was pretty sad too which was good cuz it kept me interested. all in all i think this game actually deserved a 2/5 or a 2.5 cuz this game only had a good story and thats basically it im still waiting for birth by sleep cuz that looks good anyone know when thats coming out?

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The only thing I disagree about the review with is when he said "There are too many instances of mindlessly hacking away at the life bar to make this an enjoyable adventure." For the majority of the game, I found that magic was much, much stronger than the Keyblade. You can easily kill enemies in 1 shot with Magic in this one.

I just love how G4 is biased because they have an opinion. Please stop having an opinion different then mine. I shall smite thee! lol

Ok so seriously, I do think that the score for this game is lower then it should be, but I'm finding myself absolutely loving it. Once you get past the insanely long tutorial, it's a fun game that retains the feel and playability of the PS2 games. For no analog stick, they did a great job, and if you die because you hit the wrong button or the camera locked on the wrong thing, you can just start at the beginning of the battle again with all the items and magic you had .

This is personally my favorite DS game, and I give it a 5/5. I think the only problem with your review G4, is that the review seems to read as a 4/5 but wasn't given it. That's one thing I always like about your reviews. You explain it so well that you can figure out the score you're going to give by the end of the review. Also, don't be so hard on the DS graphics compared to the PS2... This game does very well for a DS. A lot is flat, but the playbility has been preserved in the familiar layouts.

That's just my opinion. I hope everyone enjoys this game, cuz I want more of em, and I loooove the panel system. ^_^

"Sure this game wasn't great but it wasn't terrible either. A 4/5 is in place here."

Your statement is essentially what a three is.

What the hell is with all the bitching that it didn't get a 4. Oh no, suddenly the game sucks. Not everyone has to like it.

"Microsoft must've given G4 really great buttsecks that day. To give this game a 3/5?! Thats ridiculous. The freakin Halo glorified expansion pack got a 5/5 but this game with a completely different and interesting story gets a 3/5? And the gameplay is different too? WTF G4!!! Look all I'm saying is i could've told you what was coming in Halo without even playing it. You don't know what you're getting with this game. It's starting to get really ridiculous now."

This is an example of someone who is clearly biased complaining about someone else being biased. Funny. Also, Halo 3: ODST and Kingdom Hearts have next to nothing in common.

Why the hell does it break your hearts that this game didn't get a higher score?

I was pretty excited about this game. Having played it for 2 hours and not seen anything new, I'd have to agree with the review. I'm very disappointed with the game. Lots of useless button mashing and weird camera angles. I haven't seen a Disney character yet. This is my opinion on the game. I understand that this is a beloved franchise. I can respect that.

Microsoft must've given G4 really great buttsecks that day. To give this game a 3/5?! Thats ridiculous. The freakin Halo glorified expansion pack got a 5/5 but this game with a completely different and interesting story gets a 3/5? And the gameplay is different too? WTF G4!!! Look all I'm saying is i could've told you what was coming in Halo without even playing it. You don't know what you're getting with this game. It's starting to get really ridiculous now.

Anyone wanna help me make a different video game channel? You know one WITHOUT BIAS

I agree with chrisman. G4 is becoming too biased and is a big Halo fan girl for one. If Bungie spit, G4 would give it a 5/5 just cause its there. The next Halo can be crap and they would still give a 5/5. Sure this game might be a bit of a backtrack but at least give it a 4/5.

Sure this game wasn't great but it wasn't terrible either. A 4/5 is in place here.

Kingdom Hearts has been my favorite series since its been my first game on PS2! I have them all so far: KH, KH: Chain of Memories, KH2... and now KH358/2... I loved the first 3. I breath Kindom Hearts. I've reached lv.99 in both and beat sepiroth in both. Button mashing will never be a problem. As for graphics... its a DS... It will be better then Gameboy game. Every chapter is important to me. So i'm playing it. I know it will be great. Kingdom Hearts for life! (whoever said you could beat the second KH without pressing any other button but the X was greatly exaggerating. Circle and Triangle are very important)